Circulation and User
Reports: A Brief Overview
By Michael Paulmeno
Who Are We?
We are a Symphony library, SaaS hosted. Our current version is 3.5.1. Delta State has been hosted
since March 2015 and has been with SirsiDynix since 2002. Delta State has approximately 3500
students and 200 faculty members. We have over 370,000 bound volumes and 71,000 E-books in our
collection and an annual circulation of nearly 10,000 volumes. Yearly foot traffic is approximately
100,000.
Several different reports must be run nightly in order to support circulation and user management.
These perform functions including sending overdue notices, sending hold pickup notices, clearing
inactive holds, creating lists of in-transit items, and generating cash reports. We also run reports
which change user characteristics and load lists of users from outside sources. These are in addition
to standard Add, Delete, Update (ADU) and a number of add item reports.
Circulation and User Policies
User Profiles
• Student – most of our patrons
• FacStafDoc – Faculty and staff members plus doctoral students
• FOL – Friends of the Library; multiple levels including bronze, silver, gold,
platinum, and lifetime
• Dancing – Members of the Dancing Rabbit Library Consortium
• Alum_Good – Alumni in good standing
User Profiles (Cont’d)
• Not_Enroll – Special profile used when loading patrons
• ILL – Interlibrary Loan
• Lost – Charging lost items
• Missing – Charging missing items
• Repair_M – For books needing repair
Circulation Rules and Policies
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Four Symphony libraries: Main, Instructional Resources Center (IRC), Teach for
America (TFA), and Archives
Students can check out most items (books, etc) for 21 days
Audio-Visual material only circulates for 7 days
Faculty/Staff/Doctoral students can check out materials for a semester
Items on reserve, headphones circulate for 2 or 3 hours
ILL books lent for 30 days
Journals, reference books, special collections, etc. doesn’t circulate
Circulation Rules and Policies (Cont’d)
• Overdue notices sent out when items are 7, 14, and 21 days overdue
• Items made lost after 30 days
• Items marked missing if they can’t be located in the library and are not
checked out
• Recall
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If something has been checked out for more than 10 days and a patron wants it, we can
recall the item
Useful when faculty/staff checkout materials for a semester
Recalls issued on a case by case basis; rarely done
Holds
• No on-shelf holds
• Holds may only be placed on titles which are checked out
• No item-level holds, only title holds allowed
• All copies of a title must be checked out
Circulation Reports
What We Run
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Overdue Notice Reports
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Most numerous - ~17 run per night
Run with various selection criteria
Send three different notices before item is marked lost
E-mail only
Recall notices
Reserve overdue notices
Hold Pickup Notices
Clean Shelf Holds
What We Run (cont’d)
• List transits – for items in Instructional Resources Center (IRC) and Teach for
America libraries
• Workstation Cash Reports
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One each for Main library, IRC
Summarizes payment taken by each workstation, broken down by payment type
• Daily Cash Report
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Displays payment taken in outside of circulation desk
Useful for double checking work
What We Run (cont’d)
• Add Items (for Information Desks)
• Other system and serials related reports (ADU, claims, etc)
• ~ 70 reports total
• Most run between midnight and 8am
Overdue Notice Reports
Item tab → Select Item Library
Wide range of selection criteria
Overdue Notice Reports (Cont’d)
User tab → Select User Profiles
Wide range of selection criteria
Each of our reports tailored to specific profiles
Overdue Notice Reports (Cont’d)
Sorting: user id
Other options include groud id, user name, and
zip code
Overdue Notice Reports (Cont’d)
Charge Notice
3 possible messages
Each set to dates 1 week, 2
weeks, 3 weeks before
report runs
Up to five messages can be
sent in one report
Options to print bib
information, fines accrued
Overdue Notice Reports – other
options
Charge selection
Can select specific charges for each report
We don’t do so
Overdue Notice Reports – other
options
User Status Selection
Allows selection by user status and estimated fines
Not utilized by DSU
(Not pictured)
Ability to produce labels or print separate reports (one
file sorted by library)
Not utilized by DSU
Overdue Notice Reports Scheduling
Standard scheduling options: ASAP, Once, Daily,
Weekly, Monthly
We run reports daily
Can be sent to an individual or auto-e-mailed
Options to set subject line, Reply to fields
Hold Pickup Notices
• Selects active holds and sends notices to patrons who placed them
• Runs nightly
• Automatically e-mailed to patrons
• One report for each library
Hold Pickup Notices – Selection
Criteria
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Hold Selection tab (pictured) → Hold Status:
Active
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Item Selection tab → select library
User Selection tab → DSU selects nothing
Hold Pickup Notices – Notice
Selection
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Up to five messages
can be sent out
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We send one
Put library address
on notice
Clean Shelf Holds
• Lists inactive holds to be removed from shelf
• Runs for main library
• Runs nightly
• Results sorted by call number
Clean Shelf Holds (cont’d)
Trap holds tab
Hold Selection tab
List Transits
• Lists in-transit items
• Selects based on destination library (pictured on next page)
• Sorted by call number (pictured on next page)
• Runs nightly
List Transits (Cont’d)
• Our need:
• Multiple Symphony Libraries
• Items need to be in correct library
• Especially a concern with TFA
• Multi-branch libraries may value
report
Cash Reports
• Generate reports for payment received
• Three run nightly: two workstation reports, one daily cash report
Cash Reports (cont’d)
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Workstation Cash reports
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One for each library
Selects workstations
Transaction range: 1 day prior to report run date
Daily Cash report
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Selects main library only
Prints cash report for each workstation
Totals for each form of payment
Runs nightly
Sent to systems department
Cash Reports (cont’d)
Workstation Cash Report
Daily Cash Report
What We Run (cont’d)
What We Run (cont’d)
User Management
Who are our users?
• Mostly Delta State students, faculty, staff
• Each has a different loan period
• Need to distinguish between enrolled and not enrolled
• Few restrictions on borrowing different item types
• Receive patron load from Office of Information Technology
Loading Users into the System
• Distinguishing between enrolled, not enrolled requires multi-step process
• Step 1: Set user profile to NOT_ENROLL
• Step 2: Load Users from patron load file
• Step 3: Run ADU User Report
• Step 4: Set expiration date for users
• Step 5: Run fix.txt for patrons not in load file
Loading Users Step 1: Changing the profile
• Select users based on profile and privilege expiration date
• Changes profile to NOT_ENROLL
This report can erase your user database. Please
exercise caution
Edit User Characteristics report
Loading Users Step 2: The File
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Office of Information Technology transfers file to SaaS server
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Default library for new users is main
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Load user report selects file
Mode is set to create and update
Report will updated non-matched id (ex. alternate ID)
Load Users Steps 3-5: Final Steps
• Run Add, Delete, Update (ADU) User Reports
• Run Set Expiration Date reports
• One for faculty/staff/doctoral students, one for all other
students
• Selects users based on profile and expiration date
• Sets new expiration date
• Used to extent privilege past date set during user load
• Run fix.txt
• Not all users (ex. adjunct faculty) are in patron load
• We load a separate file (see sample at right) called
fix.txt
• Fix.txt manually updated
*** DOCUMENT BOUNDARY***
FORM=LDUSER
.USER_ID. |a900xxxxxx
.USER_ALT_ID. |a900xxxxxx
.USER_NAME. |Paulmeno, Michael
.USER_PROFILE. |aFACSTAFDOC
.USER_PRIV_EXPIRES. |a20160814
.USER_ADDR1_BEGIN.
.STREET. |a1000 Highway 8 West
.CITY/STATE. |aCleveland MS
.ZIP. |a38732
.USER_ADDR1_END.
.USER_ADDR2_BEGIN.
.STREET. |a1000 Highway 8 West
.CITY/STATE. |aCleveland MS
.ZIP. |a38732
.USER_ADDR2_END.
Other Reports
Other Reports We Run
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ADU Databases
Add Items
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Adds material to information desks
Used for content lists for eLibrary/Enterprise
Run 10 nightly
Serials reports: prediction as late, routing slips
Export keys for MARC Export to EBSCO Discovery Service
More which run less frequently
Questions? Comments? Thoughts?
This presentation is available at http://michaelpaulmeno.com/presentations